1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for acquiring a status of a printing apparatus in a printing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is a printing system which manages print requests issued to a printer as jobs in a print queue, and sequentially processes the jobs. In such a printing system, a request to acquire the status of the printer is generally input to the print queue as a job, and the status is then acquired (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-196573).
A printer utility inputs to the print queue the job for requesting acquisition of the printer status (hereinafter referred to as a status acquisition job). The printer utility includes a function for displaying in a dialog, various statuses of the printer, such as a remaining amount of ink and an operation mode of the apparatus.
When the printer utility is to display the printer status in the dialog, the printer utility inputs the status acquisition job in the print queue. The status acquisition job then acquires the printer status and stores it in a specific cache. Upon completion of the status acquisition job, the printer utility refers to the status stored in the cache and displays the various statuses of the printer.
As described above, when displaying the various statuses of the printer, the printer utility inputs the status acquisition job in the print queue as necessary, so that a user is not aware that the job has been input. It is thus not desirable for such a status acquisition job, which is not intended by the user, to be remaining in the print queue over a long time.
Since the status acquisition job for only acquiring and storing the printer status can be processed in a short time, the job is normally processed immediately after being input to the print queue and then removed from the print queue. However, if the status acquisition job is input while a print job is being processed in the print queue, the status acquisition job is not processed until the print job is processed, and thus remains in the print queue for a long time.